Value Chain Transformation through Innovation

We’re living and working in the 21st century
marketplace, where innovation has become the engine of growth. Although innovation is generally perceived as a
good thing, it means change which can be difficult for people to accept or
act upon.That means that making
innovation happen still boils down to being an effective leader of people, one who
inspires a vision and lays a path to get there.

Companies have developed sophisticated marketing and
sales processes to help customers
embrace innovation. Think of all the personalized emails, social outreach,
customer reviews, product comparison charts, and mobile apps you’ve
encountered.But those companies who are
getting really good at innovation aren’t just helping their customers embrace
innovation, they’re helping their employees
be innovative too.

Helping employees embrace being innovative has its advantages.In a March 2012 article featured in the International Journal of Human Resource
Management by Jyotsna Bhatnagar, empowering employees with a clear
direction and the proper tool set proved to significantly increase
innovativeness and even lower turnover intention. With the right process in
place, you can reinvigorate your teams to become more effective and engaged,
while minimizing disruption and increasing productivity.

How does it work? Doing
something new means change, and individuals need to feel good about that. They
need to feel empowered, not controlled.Freed
to make informed decisions, not shackled by doubt.Most people are naturally averse to change, and
to a higher degree if they’re uncertain about something.As
a company, standing still is a death
sentence – you have to move. Communicating the strategy and then
investing in the right business applications and processes to empower
your people can get them up and running faster, and in the right
direction.

Most companies understand you have to instill confidence in
customers to choose your new product or service, but many don’t instill the
same level of confidence in employees.Think
about being a customer yourself, and why you ultimately decided to make that last
large-ish investment. For me, it was a
new desktop computer for our home.We were
limping by with an extremely old computer running XP so when Microsoft warned
that they were discontinuing support on April, 8, 2014, that was the end.We began researching.Even though my husband and I had never owned
an Apple computer, we have other Apple devices and felt fairly confident an
Apple desktop may be a good choice.But
we started researching and easily found plenty of information.We read customer reviews, looked up prices
from the Apple website, Best Buy, and even checked Dell, Lenovo, and others
just to be sure.Mac Mini seemed the
right choice for us. We checked internet rumors every day for a month to see
when the new one would be released.Eventually
we were too excited to wait. We sat down in front of our antique, checked all
the vendors’ prices again, and finally bought the available version of the Mac
mini and enthusiastically all the accessories from the Apple website.We had found ourselves inside a company’s
modern, structured, accelerated sales process that you too have probably found
yourself in.When those packages arrived
it was like Christmas morning. I think my
husband captured our anticipation perfectly when he exclaimed: “Sha-ZAM!” Now, owning all of those entirely new things
from Apple makes us feel good and our lives easier, even minus that big chunk
of change.

Apple, like many successful innovators, has created a
structured sales process that inoculates the buyer’s perception of risk and makes
trying something new a thrill.People are
savvy, and in today’s world, we all expect access to information to help us
make informed decisions.And that
applies to any context, as consumers or at our jobs.When was the last time you said “Sha-ZAM!” at
work?

The top innovators understand that not only do you have to
empower customers to choose your innovation, but you have to also empower
employees to be innovative.Trying
something new or taking a risk - however cool and innovative - can be
difficult, whether it’s investing your money in a new computer or waging your career
on a product proposal.Product Development
has long been critical to success.But
when we think of today’s 21st century marketplace and the higher
importance executives place on innovation as the engine of growth, the higher
the stakes for product development to deliver.The strategic value of the function continues to increase while the
overall business environment relentlessly grows more complex.The top performers have found that innovation
is a process, like the sales process, that needs to give people clear direction
and an empowering framework to execute in order to obtain a desired result.

Questions? Comments? Keep the convo going by leaving a note here
or on Twitter @KerJordan.